They reiterated the basics of the plan one final time: the first phase of construction will build a six-story building containing roughly 170 apartment units and 10,000 square feet of retail space, and that phase will also include widening of Madison Street, which will be converted to one-way, the conversion of about 10 parking spaces running parallel to the street into 55 angled spaces, a public plaza near Madison and Wood Streets, and a recreational trail connecting to a skate park.

“We’ve taken a lot of time in the last couple of weeks, working with borough staff and consultants, to come up with a lot of landscaping features and design elements that really bring a lot of pop to the plan itself,” Rearden said.

“It’s not just a scattering of trees, it’s done with the thought in mind that it really marries with the streetscape the borough has set,” he said.

The second phase would see construction of a second building including about 76 residential units, 7,500 or so square feet of retail, and a parking structure that would bring the total number of spaces built by the project to 429, according to Haines and Rearden.

“We thought by doing it in a phased approach, you’d allow the market to absorb (the units). We didn’t want to deliver too much product too quickly, and the last thing we would want is to have 10,000 square feet of retail sit empty for two or three years,” Haines said.

Two motions were unanimously passed by council, one to grant preliminary and final land development approval and another to vacate parts of Wood Street and a private alley that exist on maps but have not been developed. Borough solicitor Mark Hosterman told council that the borough was “relinquishing its public access rights” to those paper streets, but technically had done so already “when the borough did not operate a street within 21 years” of the roads being laid out on maps.

Several residents expressed concerns about the timing of the phased construction, which Rearden and Haines said is still being discussed with borough staff and likely to start in spring 2014, and both said the developer would work to minimize the impact to nearby businesses and parking in the current lot north of Madison Street.

“The goal is to try to keep the road open as much as possible, and we’ve done the improvements such that they are from the center of the road over, so we’re trying to minimize the impact to one side,” Rearden said.

Planning Commission member Drew Stockmal said he supported the project in a vacuum, but was worried about adding dense residential and retail traffic directly adjacent to the planned rehabilitated arts center and theater at 311 West Main Street.

“I’m not worried about Thursday afternoons at 4 p.m. I’m worried about Saturdays at 8 (p.m.) when the restaurants are full, the arts center is full,” Stockmal said

He compared the incoming development to similar projects in Manayunk roughly 25 years ago when high residential demand quickly exhausted commercial and residential parking supply, and warned council to try to pre-empt downtown traffic and parking congestion overflowing into neighborhoods.

Communication commission member Rick Murphy also asked council to be wary of “potential unintended consequences” that could follow if SEPTA riders shift from parking in the current Madison Lot to lots near the Pennbrook Station, and warned that overflow parking could spill into neighborhoods there too and potentially cause more frequent road repairs.

“We as a borough are losing funds because these people are parking for free (instead of in a municipal lot), and also because they’re parking on these roads, they are driving on them more than other roads, and these secondary roads are not as durable as the main roads,” Murphy said.

Parking Authority member John Siegler said he supported the development project, and reminded council “that you do have an active parking authority whose role it is to monitor this process. If we need more parking, we’ll figure out what we need to do to have more parking.”

Councilman Denton Burnell said he hoped the authority would work with next year’s council members to heed those concerns. “No one can predict the future, but they’re obviously doing their best to plan for it, and make this the successful project we all know it can be,” he said.

Lansdale Borough Council next meets at 9 p.m. on Dec. 4 with committee meetings starting at 6:30 p.m. that night, at the North Penn School District’s Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock Street. For more information or meeting agendas and materials visit www.Lansdale.org or follow @LansdalePA on Twitter.